Do You Fear Black Men?

I know very few bloggers I have followed as long as I have followed Brotha Wolf. It's probably because somewhere along the line, he contacted me directly and we have formed a distant, yet personal relationship of sorts, a concern for each other as comrades in a struggle to fight White Supremacy on either side of a line of demarcation.

A couple of days ago, he posted this film. I am so glad he did. And if you watch it, you will be, too.

Kai Davis: Fuck I Look Like?

I came to Louisiana for a nine-month temporary gig in August of 2007. So, by the time I finish this school year, I will have taught here for a decade. The day I arrived, I was told, "You will find our students lacking. They're under-prepared. They don't like to read. And they don't know that's a problem."

My thought at the time was, "Even if that's true, why would somebody say that to me on Day One? That's like calling students incapable before I even meet 'em." But it turned out that, by and large, I was being told the truth.

On the other hand, I eventually learned (on my own) that, while any low income student might demonstrate the traits I had been warned about and even students from families with money might have succumbed to the traits along the way, Black students, in particular, were the most likely to arrive as first year students looking and sounding like they fit the profile.

Then, I started dragging them to my office one at a time to explain the okey-doke. I assured them that, with a little input and a lot of effort -- despite the obstacles placed in front of them since birth -- they could build the boat while it was in the water and they were standing in it. Over the years, more than a few have proven me right.

The upshot is that, while many classes on the campus have two or three Black students at most in them, my classes tend to weigh in at 30% or better Black -- even the first year students who just arrived and are taking Intro courses with 90 students in them. It's not because I'm wonderful. It's because I tell them the truth. And I know who they are. And in the mirror of my face they see themselves succeeding. Because -- given a real shot -- they are ferociously ready to learn and ready to teach.

Dizzy Wright: "I Need Answers" featuring Kikkiya

Institutionalized Oppression: the American Way?

Having taken a fresh look at institutionalized oppression by re-posting Lindy West's essay on "hipster racism" a few days ago, I'm gonna release a flurry of body punches now on some more very touchy issues related to the socially-constructed, political notion of "race." Institutionalized oppression, by the way, occurs when one group holds another group (or even more than one group) in a position of reduced status for the purpose of exploitation. Exploitation means taking advantage of people because you have the power to do so and the whole point of it is the range of benefits (especially economic benefits) that result from the arrangement. In other words, White Supremacy ensures that White people as a group get the most of the best and the least of the worst in the U.S., while People of Color wind up with the most of the worst and the least of the best in that society.

Does every member of the dominating group benefit equally and in all the same ways? Not necessarily. But they all benefit. Does every member of an oppressed group suffer equally and in all the same ways? Not necessarily. But they all feel the lash (pun intended) in ways the members of the dominating group don't typically like to and don't have to acknowledge.

Why don't oppressors have to acknowledge what's going on? Because the oppression is actually embedded in the social institutions: the systems we call family, education, religion, politics, and economics. So people who call themselves "White" can ignore it and pretend that, because they don't indiscriminately use the "n-word" in public (for example), they're not part of the problem. They're good people. How could they be "racist?" And because we're all -- Black and White -- socialized on the same page, People of Color are affected in a whole series of ways by the constant barrage of physical, psychological, emotional, social, and economic reinforcements that produce results used to "prove" their inferiority. (A phenomenon sociologists call "internalized oppression" exacerbated by the widespread practice of "blaming the victim.")

The social institutions keep the ideology of White Supremacy so firmly in place, we have come to view it as "natural." So, we think that whatever White people do is well-meaning and basically positive, while whatever People of Color (and especially Black people) do is unacceptable, embarrassing, and basically negative.

You might want to read these with a little space in between. The first two are pretty intense.

Stop And Frisk Isn't A Program; It's A Pogram

Yesterday's video demonstrated that Black boys are presumed guilty until proven innocent (ass-backwards to the way the U.S. Constitution reads) and the part about being proven innocent is often given short shrift, if anyone bothers to consider the possibility at all. So a Black youth messing with a bicycle (or a world famous Black Harvard professor in his 70's like Henry Louis Gates trying to loosen his own front door when it's stuck) is likely to be arrested when a White youth wouldn't get a second look.

Today's YouTube video takes the subject one step farther, demonstrating that Black boys don't have to be doing anything except...well...being Black to get rousted repeatedly, terrorized without warning, roughed up (sometimes horrifically), or even accidentally(?) killed by officers of the law (as it were). What's a Black kid to do?
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"Stop and Frisk," for those of you who have never been on the internet before today, is a policy abused in New York City for the past decade or so and more recently castigated for its style of implementation. Duh.

Jay Smooth: On Don Lemon, Race and "Respectability"

The Boondocks: "Return of the King"

Folks are always forwarding me stuff they've come across (for which I'm grateful). And they usually say two things: "You've probably already seen this" (which is often not the case) and "I'd really like your take on this" (which I'm not always sure of). The above Aaron McGruder video in The Boondocks series just showed up as a message on my Facebook page. I hadn't already seen it and I'm thinking it'll cause some consternation (as McGruder's work often does).

What do you think?

Jon M. Chu: "Silent Beats"

This short film by Jon M. Chu is so powerful, I'm not even going to say anything about it. It's entitled "Silent Beats" and won the Princess Grace Award in 2006. Prepare to be made veeeery uncomfortable. Prepare to be forced to think long and hard about some of these images afterward.

Brotha Wolf Is Tired

As my regular readers know, I sometimes get down off my soapbox just long enough to make room for another blogger to have his or her say. One blogger I've presented more than once is a young man of color, Brotha Wolf, a good writer with something to say, but when I step aside, it's not just because I'm feeling lazy. It's because he has opened his soul and I cannot but love him for that.

This opening of the soul is not an accident or the egoistic machinations of a would-be intellectual. Opening the soul relieves pressure sometimes, but always at a cost. Opening the soul occurs only after its very fabric has ripped. Then, for a few hours or days, a certain clarity of vision and expression makes possible a breakthrough of understanding and statement that can, if heeded, benefit us all. Today, with gratitude and his kind permission, I'm presenting this recent post by Brotha Wolf.

The Tired Rant

by Brotha Wolf

A Letter to White Southern Women from Anne Braden

As I mention from time to time, I've been studying the socially-constructed, political notion of "race" for fifty years now. That's a while. But I just keep learning. Which amazes me.

A year or so ago, one of my students mentioned Anne Braden because the Flobots had sampled one of her speeches to include in a spoken word/rap cut on one of their albums. The student thought she sounded like me -- and she did. But she sounded like me now back in the 1960's, so I was impressed.

Then, last month, Appalshop (an arts and social justice collective in the mountains of Kentucky in a little tiny town named for one of my notorious and very likely super racist ancestors) came out with a documentary entitled "Anne Braden ~ Southern Patriot." And now we can see her in action for ourselves.

Braden was the genuine article, the no-holds-barred, go-for-broke, take-no-prisoners real deal. And the film is beyond inspiring and all the way into challenging. At the risk of sounding like all the other commercial hawkers out there, I'm going to say this film is a must-see if you're a regular reader of this blog. You can buy the film directly from Appalshop or from California Newsreel. Or you can ask your local public or school library to buy it (they have money for this sort of thing and are just waiting for people to make good suggestions).

To whet your appetite, there's a letter floating around from Anne Braden to White Southern women. I've edited it slightly to leave out a few lines that are now untimely. But this will give you a sense of who she was and how far short many of the rest of us fall when it comes to the fight for social justice.

A Letter to White Southern Women from Anne Braden

White Denial and a Culture of Stereotypes

One topic I have to keep coming back to over and over, it seems, is the topic of White denial. What I mean by this is that many White people instantly deny that the experience of people of color in the United States is different from the experience of White people. The particular White people in question (like some of those in my course on race that just started a couple of weeks ago) will suggest that anyone can be racist (most especially Black people who are still angry at White people for holding them in slavery); that White Supremacy is only evident in folks that wear hoods made of sheets; and that oppression is something that happens only to people who live under extremist Islamic regimes.

The fact is that White denial is the Number One form of "playing the Race Card." In fact, White denial is probably the hands-down biggest Race Card of all time. And it's been discussed ad nauseum to no avail. White people ain't listening. But maybe (I keep thinking), if we try it one more time, somebody will say it differently and somebody new will catch the drift.

In hopes of this, I'm re-posting an excellent piece by Dr. David J. Leonard. It's somewhat more scholarly than the language usually is on this blog, but it appeared last week on the Huffington Post (not exactly the Journal of the American Sociological Association), so I'm going to give you an opportunity to check it out and see if it helps make sense of a few things better than I already have. If the post by Lesley didn't do it for you last week, maybe Dr. Leonard can bring it home today.

White Denial and a Culture of Stereotypes
by Dr. David J. Leonard

The Danger of the Single Story

A couple of months ago, I posted a YouTube video about life in the 'hood. It was produced by talented young Black actors, writers, directors, and musicians and has gotten a lot of play on the internet. But I asked when I posted it, "What's wrong with this picture?"

The video I'm posting today answers that question.

Beauty and the Beat

After seeing this on Facebook and watching it twice, I showed it to Boxer, who said, "Show it again" and then, "You gotta post this on your blog."

Okay. Here it is.

White Girl sings, "There's must be more than this to a hood rat's life!"

Is there? What do you say?

Self-Explanatory

A couple of months ago, I received the following email.  I don't think it needs comment from me to get the point across, do you?

"Hi. I'm in your Racial and Ethnic Relations class. I recently had an experience and I don't know what to make of it. I had to bring my son to turn in a paper and...as I was walking around campus with my son in his stroller, I started to notice the way people were looking at me. I knew the look because you get it from teachers and co-workers all the time. It's that look people give you when they are associating your race with some kind of negativity. I've been getting that look my whole life so I know it when I see it.

Pitts: You Don't Really Know Me

The following was written by Leonard Pitts, Jr., of the Miami Herald. I virtually never post anything in its entirety, but this is extraordinary. Leonard Pitts is a highly respected columnist who happens to be African-American. This is his take on White people who always seem to blame a Black man when they want to create a believable villain:

"I am your scapegoat. I am your boogeyman. Brown-skinned, kinky-haired, black man, me.

"So I was not surprised (it was just another day at the office) last week when a white woman from suburban Philadelphia called police from her cellphone, claiming she had been locked in the trunk of a Cadillac by two black men. Nor was I shocked (it was just another day in the life) when police said Bonnie Sweeten was actually holed up in a luxury hotel at Walt Disney World, and there never was a kidnapping, much less by two black men.

"I'm your scapegoat. I'm your boogeyman. So I'm used to these things.

"In fact, they happen often. Happened just a few months ago when that John McCain campaign worker said she was robbed by a burly black man who carved a 'B' into her face . . . as in 'Barack,' get it? Turned out she carved the letter herself, then blamed a black man. Just as Charles Stuart did when he killed his wife in 1989. Just as Tanya Dacri did when she dismembered her 7-week-old son that same year. Just as Susan Smith did when she rolled her car, her two boys inside, into a lake in 1994.

"University of Florida law professor Katheryn Russell-Brown, author of The Color of Crime, has documented 92 such incidents between 1987 and 2006. She cautions that white men are sometimes victims of racial hoaxes: witness the cases of Tawana Brawley and the Duke lacrosse team.

"But she says the overwhelming majority of the time -- 67 percent, to be exact -- it is the other way around: white liars blaming black men for things that did not happen. Russell-Brown is particularly intrigued that Sweeten identified her supposed kidnappers as driving a Cadillac. That fits a pattern, she says. 'When it's someone white alleging they've been harmed by someone African American, there are these fantastic racially laden stereotypes that are used. Whether it's dreadlocks, or smell, or big and burly. This fits right in, the Cadillac.'

"Naturally. Because I'm your scapegoat, your boogeyman. Cadillac drivin', pimp-walkin', white woman-lustin', me.

"I am the shape and size and sound of your fears. You know me on sight, know me before you know my name, know me before I even stick out my hand and say Hi. You know I have no feelings beyond your perception of me, no thought beyond what you impute to me, no purpose beyond your fear of me. I live in the shadow of your consciousness, do not exist outside of you.

"But can you imagine if I did? Boy, can you imagine the ache and anger if I did?

"It's a good thing I don't, a good thing I am only what I am: scapegoat, boogeyman, the car window you roll up, the door you lock, the ATM you avoid, the crime statistics you glance right by because they try to tell you I'm not what you think I am, didn't do what you thought I did.

"Hell, you don't need some researcher's 'statistics' to know about me. We've known each other for years. Dozens of years, hundreds of years. Remember when you denied me a job, then called me a thief? Remember when you blew up my school then called me ignorant? Remember when you killed my father, then complained I was filled with rage?

"No, you're right. There's no point in remembering that. Why should you remember a past that makes you uncomfortable? Why do I even need a past, existing as I do only within the confines of your awareness? All we have -- or need -- is the now. And in the now, Bonnie Sweeten has been exposed and she'll face the law and that's all we can really ask, isn't it? There's no point in digging deeper, no purpose served in wondering why, when she wanted to put a face to a crime, she chose mine.

"We already know. I'm your scapegoat, I'm your boogeyman. And I have no feelings beyond those you give me.

"But can you imagine if I did?"
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Leonard Pitts, Jr., can be contacted by email at lpitts@miamiherald.com